Potential for extending long term use of implantable medical devices increases with continual innovations extending battery life. As battery life improves, improvements continue to be sought to enable implantable medical devices to sustain functional efficiency over an extended device lifetime and increase chronic biocompatibility. Longevity of implantable medical devices with electrodes is often limited by glial encapsulation. Glial cells are non-neuronal cells that provide support and protection for neurons in the brain and peripheral nervous system. Implanting a medical device near a neuron can trigger glial encapsulation, which is a biological response that forms glial scar tissue around the medical device. Glial encapsulation creates a slowly, but continuously, growing impedance barrier that requires increased charge flow to overcome. Unfortunately, such glial encapsulation also progressively weakens the electrode signal, and physically displaces the implant, causing the implant to move away from the original implant location.